Tag Archives: insulated

The President and his team still don’t understand why their base is so angry that actions like this are occurring. They blame bloggers, the “professional left,” the “internet left fringe” and other vague classifications of people for their political woes. Sorry, guys, you were the geniuses who thought you could keep the base pacified with Cinderella Crumbs and keep the cash and love flowing.

President Barack Obama got heckled at a fundraiser Wednesday night by protesters pushing for more funding for AIDS programs and quicker action to allow gays to serve openly in the military.

Activists yelled slogans and held signs aloft reading “Obama broken promises KILL.” Supporters of the president tried to drown them out with shouts of “O-bam-a! O-bam-a!”

The hecklers were so raucous Obama went off-script several times to address them, insisting he’s increased AIDS funding and is working to overturn the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He told them to go shout at Republicans, noting that a vote on repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” failed this week in the Senate, with Republicans united in opposition.

And his inner circle is breaking up; all I can say is the President needs some reality-based people in his administration. The traditional, fossilized Beltway thinking means the WH is inhabited by pod people.

The inner circle – Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Vice President Biden – is breaking up, or at least breaking open. Emanuel is widely expected to run for mayor of Chicago, and Axelrod is likely to leave this spring to prepare for Obama’s 2012 reelection effort.

Some former aides and allies of the president expressed hope that Obama will take advantage of the departures – which are common at the two-year point in any presidency – to bring in outsiders who will challenge the president’s current team.

“They miscalculated where people were out in the country on jobs, on spending, on the deficit, on debt,” said a longtime Democratic strategist who works with the White House on a variety of issues. “They have not been able to get ahead of any of it. And it’s all about the insularity. Otherwise how do you explain how a group who came in with more goodwill in decades squandered it?” The strategist asked not to be identified in order to speak freely about the president and his staff.

I guess political sophistication takes on a whole new meaning when executed by these WH brainiacs who slagged any critics as naive about how things work. Joe Sudbay said exactly what I was thinking this AM when I read about this story.

The failure to pass DADT repeal rests with the President. And, before the apologists start screeching that it was Congress and the Republicans, ask what Obama did to help pass the Defense Authorization bill. There’s a simple answer: Nothing. Not a word.

Yes, there’s a reason people are heckling. It’s the only chance to be heard. Our advocacy organizations aren’t doing their jobs. Most of those groups dropped their organizational missions in exchange for for access and invitations long ago. The only reason the DADT legislative compromise made it this far is because SLDN and SU kept pushing and GetEQUAL upped the pressure.

And GetEqual has a brilliant, scathing new video out about all those broken promises by Team Obama and LGBT “leadership.” And all of these people are caught on video with dates for legislative progress that are dust in the wind…

We intend, whatever the issue, to continue our mission of “empower[ing] the LGBTQ community and our allies to take bold action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way.” As a community, it’s time to STOP trying to be liked and accepted and DEMAND that we be treated with EQUALITY and DIGNITY!

GetEqual shares some of the heartbreaking promises over the past three years from elected officials President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Representative Barney Frank. Also includes clips from Rae Carey of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Joe Solmonese from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).